But not every character gets that increase. Denam's wielding a 2h katana and gets nothing from every earring but the 2H katana one, which has only a very small increase which seems to be only from the skill ranks, and a generic dragoon with a sword and fusil gets nothing for the fusil from a sword earring.

Can you go through the endgame gear changes a bit?
Since sidegrades are only available for shop pieces, are they still competitive with the elemental pieces? And only the robes have an augment level? Doesn't that make the elemental armor kind of pointless?
And for the accessories, I'm confused at how earrings are increasing the attack of people who aren't wielding the correct weapon type.

Light Lord doesn't feel as good now, which I think it's a good thing compared to Divine and Dark being so much better in the original. Might switch to Fire Lord.
The White Knight duo is overbearingly powerful in undead fights. Considering what the Palace is, might be better to rein it in a little bit. Maybe make the quickening from fervor end immediately, so all it does is make their next turn come faster.
I also had the idea of adding that same small quicken effect to all war dances (only to the user), which now have mostly good effects (harvest still sucks), but could use one more small push. If using them also allowed the next turn to come faster, they'd be in a pretty good spot, and I feel that blends in well with the Swordmaster's image.

Yes, it's intended.
Anyway Raics, my crafting chances just fixed themselves back to 100% from 90-96% somehow. And as mentioned, it was not just visual, I did fail a couple times. I've been going through some of the sidegrades, and doesn't the cloth armor sidegrade completely eclipse regular light armor?
I'm wondering, how were draconic damage spells calculated again? Sherri nearly always does less damage with Terra than with Cragfall II, but Denam does three to five times more with Aura than with Spiritsurge.

Yeah, my first time messing that up. I applied the latest updated one day, played another, and forgot I had auto-load latest savestate turned on.
How much does this mess up? I'm already past Barnicia and not super into starting over again, but if I had to, better now than later.

Oh, and I've only going straight for the leader in Galgastan missions for the CF, and am yet to evac anyone. But this is the same as my last playthrough, there's 2 spots where the level difference gets really bad: end of chapter 3, I usually go to Xeod Moors with baldur weaponry for quick clears to catch up, but it happens again right at the end of the game, last play I just pushed through and had 4 units lose a heart to the final boss for it, because it's easy to bully Uram in the first chapter 4 fight for exp with the WORLD.

Did you...remove Oz and Ozma's pissy fit ranged attack? Young man, you put that back this instant.
Seriously though, I just reached chapter 4 in the new playthrough, and I think it's time to do something about the exp curve. The player shouldn't have to grind levels while going through the story the first time (not to mention the classes you get way late), the way it is right now you reach the hanging gardens at level 17-18 and enemies are way higher. Even the shop equipment is two tiers ahead, at times. The first Damasc pieces showed up and my highest level is still 14.
Keeping it this slow also exacerbates the gaps in weapon availability. Your 2H bow options is stuck at the level 7 Longbow for 2 whole chapters.

What you're saying is about poison in the player's hands, though. The real problem is how the AI uses it. Enemies would work better if they simply didn't have access to poison. It's doing them almost exclusively harm.

Is there a save editor for this game? Ended up losing my save and all I still had to do was the palace and CODA. Don't really want to have to reach the endgame again, as the game is still very...very slow at the start.
EDIT: Actually, nevermind, I just saw the huge overhaul that 0.89 and 0.90 were and I should probably go through the progression again.

Every file I think may be something good is either a .cm, .efb, .ebp, and I don't know what any of those extensions are, but there's a bunch of interesting .bins alongside the license boards, like ability_data and license_data and more importantly, waza_data, which I'm pretty sure it's Technicks.

Seems there's a file just for treasures. I'd like to at some point finish what they started with IZJS.
Back in the original FFXII, treasures were mostly pointless, so in IZJS they changed chests so there's a lot of good equipment in the zones. However, they're still mostly equipment available in a previous shop (except if you do the Mosphoran sequence break), and they still require a lot of mindless walking back and forth due to the chance of spawn, chance of gil, and chance of item. I'd like to change all equipment treasure chests to be one-time only, always have only a piece of equipment of the next shop you're about to visit, and say, 80% chance to spawn. That way the player is rewarded for fully exploring every new zone.
Technicks should be changed almost entirely, use them to give license boards some unique tools. But aside from that I'd only really change the Time Battlemage and the Machinist a little bit.